Highlights
- Fort Collins Brewery is just one of a handful of Colorado craft brewers adapting to consumer's evolving tastes.
- This month, Great Divide Brewing debuted a new version of its Denver Pale Ale, converting the mainstay from a malt-forward English-style beer to an American-style
FORT COLLINS — Tina Peters realized the need for change after a long day in the brewhouse.
The general manager and co-owner at Fort Collins Brewery walked into the tavern for a beer, as she and her colleagues often do at the end of a shift. But she didn’t see anything she wanted to drink.
“At the end of the day … we felt that a lot of beers on the current FCB docket were not things that we wanted to go down and order,” she said. “We really wanted to come down and be so excited about what our options were.”
The blunt admission from the namesake brewery in this Colorado craft beer haven motivated Peters to launch a complete overhaul this year, with all new beers and packaging.
“It’s definitely very trying to say we are going to scrap 15 years of experience and start from scratch,” she said in a recent interview.
Fort Collins Brewery is just one of a handful of Colorado craft brewers taking a new look at their beer list as the palates and preferences of consumers evolve amid the industry’s exploding growth. The popularity of India pale ales is pushing the limit on hopped brews, and sours and high-gravity beers are attracting a cult following.
This month, Great Divide Brewing debuted a new version of its Denver Pale Ale, converting the mainstay from a malt-forward English-style beer to an American-style that is lighter in color with a crisp taste and more dominant hop flavor.
The change is signaled by a new can design with a colorful mural that encapsulates what it means to live in the beer’s home city.
“This city has changed a lot since we first launched Denver Pale Ale almost 20 years ago, and so have the palates of craft beer drinkers,” said Brian Dunn, Great Divide founder and president, in announcing the change. He added: “We decided it was time to update the beer to better represent everything that this city has become.”
What’s so striking: The original beer tasted great. Touted as “a world-renowned classic pale ale,” it won the industry’s top two awards, a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup, in 1999 and 2000, respectively.
The move toward American styles, often marked by bright citrus hops and lighter malts, represents a significant shift from the German and English standard-bearers with sweeter, robust malts and earthy noble hops that birthed the nation’s craft industry.
Tom and Jan Peters launched Fort Collins Brewery in 2003 as a German lager house with three beers. It grew quickly. And in 2014, the leadership shift to their daughter allowed for the company to embark in a new direction with fresh labeling and cans that debuted this year.
The reinvention is easily apparent when you walk in the taproom on Lincoln Avenue, the city’s craft beer highway. On a recent visit, the draft list displayed on TV screens behind the bar, which featured brews that would have seemed foreign here even a year ago, including a kettle-soured dark cherry imperial red ale that tasted like a tart cherry pie, thanks to 600 pounds of the fruit.
The core beers are revamped, too. The Far Away IPA is now a West Coast-style with big tropical flavors and a lighter body that will satisfy the growing hordes of hop heads. And even the Shot Down stout, the brewery’s most popular beer, received a makeover with the addition of Dutch bittersweet chocolate.
The brewery’s Malt Monsters beers, a series of boozy, malty rare beers epitomized by the Maibock that appears in the spring — were ended or reincarnated.
“I think it’s unfortunate,” Peters said. “As much as we love it, our customers are who we are here for and brewing beer for. And if they are not flocking to it like they used to, then maybe it’s time to make a change.”
However, Peters said the far-reaching moves are not motivated by declining sales. In fact, she says, the brewery voluntarily pared back its distribution to only 18 states and has declined recent requests for new distribution to better serve its current markets.
True to its origins, Fort Collins Brewery still describes itself as a brewery with a “strong German background” even as it expands into trendy styles.
“We wanted to experiment and try new things,” Peters said. “I think you are seeing a lot of breweries want to do what we are excited about. We don’t have to be pigeonholed to say we can only do this style because we got a medal in German beers.”
